


November 24, 2016

by bookglue



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: F/M, Headcanon, Secret Relationship, Thanksgiving, They are my forever ship, in less than 12 hours this will be canon-divergent, please please please let me get what i want
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-24
Updated: 2016-11-24
Packaged: 2018-09-01 23:55:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8643139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookglue/pseuds/bookglue
Summary: "This latest time it had started in New York, a chance encounter at a book party. Or rather, three chance encounters at book parties in as many weeks. Three conversations that started with an awkward introduction from a relative stranger. Three nights spent talking only to each other on the balcony at Housing Works. They’d sipped from plastic cups of cheap wine until they were the last people left three times, and then they’d fallen into a cab back to Brooklyn, and then up four flights of stairs to her apartment, and then into her bed three times. He’d woken up three mornings with her hair in his mouth and her pillow creases on his cheek."
No one would ever accuse Rory and Jess of being good at keeping a secret.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A last gasp at headcanon before AYITL. For my Stars-Hollow.org Lits, and especially for Leigh, who provided the location prompt (fall on the bridge). I couldn’t be more thankful this Thanksgiving that you’ve all been in my life for over 14 years.
> 
> (Please let them end up together. Please please please.)
> 
> (10 hours, 46 minutes!)

Her nose is buried 150 pages deep in an Elena Ferrante novel when Jess shows up. He’s ten minutes later than he said he’d be, but he stops at the foot of the bridge just to look at her, looking like a photograph he used to use as a bookmark.

When he steps onto the bridge she looks up. The wood groans and creaks beneath his boots, and flexes underneath her. She can’t help smiling.

“Why do you always insist on meeting somewhere cold?” he asks, once he’s within earshot.

“It’s not cold, it’s crisp.” Rory’s breath puffs out in front of her. She stands up, stretches a bit.

“It’s cold. If I’m wearing a scarf it’s cold.”

She snorts. “Please, that scarf is a fashion statement, it’s not insulating you against anything.” She leans in and pulls him close, her arms around his waist, pushes up on her toes just a bit, just so their noses are touching, and then their lips. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Carry on with your complaining about the weather then, I’ll listen.” She leans back, but doesn’t let go. Her fingertips hook around the pockets of his coat, holding his hips against hers. She worries at the corner of his pocket paperback with her left index finger.

“I’m just saying, there are lots of warmer places we could meet. Inside places. Places with central heating.”

“But this is our spot.”

“We could find a new spot.” His hand reaches up, tucks a strand of hair behind her right ear. “A better spot.”

“Sorry Bub, you’re the one who was all ‘I like this place, that’s where Luke pushed me in.’ Anyway, outside in the cold means no people–”

“Ah, so you admit it’s cold!”

“–And we said we were going to keep this thing a secret until we figure out what it is we’re doing.”

“Right.”

“So if you want to have _that_ conversation…” she trails off. She doesn’t want to have _that_ conversation. Certainly not now.

“Nah, better save it.” He cups his hand around the back of her head, pulls her in again. Ooh, she always forgets kissing Jess is like this.

They’ve been putting off “The Talk” for months now, dancing around it while they’ve flirted and made out and texted each other in the middle of the night. They put it off through two days in Philadelphia during which they barely left his bed, and for a long weekend in an AirBnB in Toronto. They’ve both brought it up, both changed the subject. The possibility that this is something serious has too many consequences, the possibility that it’s not...well neither of them really like that idea either.

Plus, it’s fun to keep a secret. Right?

She’s got her arms wrapped around his neck now, her fingers slipping and twisting through his hair, and his hands are sliding back down around her waist, brushing against a ticklish spot above her right hip. She giggles and it bounces off his teeth, winds back around her tongue.

Finally she pulls away from the kiss, buries her face in the crook of his neck. “I’m supposed to be at Mom’s in fifteen minutes,” she says into his decorative scarf, then looks up at him. “I promised I’d help her finish cleaning before everyone comes over.

“Right,” Jess says. “I’m supposed to be there in thirty. Luke enlisted me as his sous chef.”

“Seriously?”

“Well, I assume he knew better than to ask you and your mom for help in the kitchen.”

She shrugs. “I can cook. I can make eggs.”

“I hate to break it to you, but your eggs are terrible. And you can’t make eggs for Thanksgiving dinner anyway.”

“My eggs are not terrible! They’re just...a little dry. Anyway, it could be a new thing, a side dish. Eggs a la Rory.” He laughs. “Fine then,” Rory huffs, “I can’t wait to watch you cook. I’m going to sit at the kitchen table and critique your whisking skills.”

He kisses her on the cheek and then turns towards the end of the bridge, back towards town. He grabs her hand. They start to walk. “I’ll kick you out of the kitchen.”

“It’s my kitchen!”

“I’ll get Luke to back me up.”

“He would never.”

They come out around the side of the high school, where the dirt path turns into sidewalk, and drop each other’s hands. The town square is bustling, full of people rushing to buy the last few cans of pumpkin on the shelves at Doose’s market and others walking to friends’ houses for dinner. Jess shoves his hands into his pockets and she crosses her arms over her chest. She can see Luke closing up across the square, and Lane and Zack marching towards Mrs. Kim’s with the boys. She catches Lane’s eye and waves, gets a wave and a quizzical look in return as Lane eyes her companion. They’ll be over later.

“So how are we playing this anyway?” Jess asks as they wander across the square towards the flower shop.

“Playing what?”

“This whole secret relationship thing. Are we friends now? Do we talk? Is this the first time we’ve seen each other in years?”

She looks up at him. “Friendly, I think? We could just say we exchange emails sometimes, if anyone asks. That’s true.” She rifles through a bucket of pre-arranged bouquets, selects a couple that don’t look too wilted.

“That would have been true four months ago.” He grins at her and there’s a bit of a leer in it, a good leer. “We exchange a lot more than emails these days.”

“Shush.”

He has always liked watching Rory blush, the way it rises up from her neck and pinks the apples of her cheeks. It’s everything he can do not to pull her to him again. He’d really love to run his tongue over the reddest spot, right behind her ear.

She steps away to pay for the flowers and when she gets back her blush has subsided a bit. “If you so much as hint to my mother that you’ve seen me naked you may never see me naked again,” she says, but she’s smiling.

They part ways outside of Luke’s, settling for a smile as a goodbye. She waves to Luke through the window and turns back towards her mother’s house.

 

“Rory! Thank God you’re here,” Lorelai says when she walks in the front door. “Did you get the flowers?” She’s got her hair wrapped up in a bandana Rosie the Riveter style and an ancient duster in her hand. “I promised Luke I would vacuum before he got home and I can’t find the vacuum cleaner.”

“Do you _have_ a vacuum cleaner?”

“We must.” She drops the duster on an end table and puts her hands on her hips. “Mustn’t we?”

“I don’t think you do.”

Lorelai frowns.

“Do you want me to run over and see if I can borrow Babette’s?”

Lorelai nods. “Yes please!” She collects the bouquets from Rory’s arms. “I’ll put these in water.”

“And I will be right back,” Rory says, rebuttoning her coat and turning back towards the door.

 

By the time they’ve finished cleaning the first floor Luke and Jess are at the door, loaded down with groceries and an enormous, already cooked turkey wrapped in foil.

“Let me get that,” Rory says, taking the roasting pan out of Jess’s hands, allowing her fingers to run over his. They make eye contact for a second and smile and then she turns away, heading for the kitchen. “This thing is _huge_.”

“Perks of having an industrial sized oven on hand,” Luke says, following her. “Your mother invited everyone we’ve ever met, so it seemed necessary.

“It’s not everyone,” Lorelai insists. “Half of everyone, maybe. How are you, Jess?”

“I’m good.”

“Still in Philadelphia?”

“Yup.”

Rory stifles a laugh. Some things change, stilted attempts at conversation between her mother and Jess never will.

“Still writing?”

He nods. “My fourth book is out in a few weeks.”

She feels a little twist in her stomach, pleasure and a bit of jealousy. She loves that he’s doing so well, her heart beats an extra beat every time she sees one of his books out in the world, but she wishes her own writing career was doing as well as his.

“Hey Luke, what can we do to help?” she asks.

“Uh,” Luke glances between her and Lorelai and then eyes the groceries. “I think we’re good, actually. Why don’t you two relax.”

“Come on, Luke, I can help. I can make scrambled eggs!”

Out of the corner of her eye she can see Jess trying not to laugh out loud while he starts shucking ears of corn over the sink, his shoulders shaking just a bit.

“I...wasn’t planning on making any scrambled eggs for Thanksgiving dinner.”

“I’m just saying, I have kitchen skills. Put me to work.”

He sighs. “Fine. Take over shucking the corn. Jess, you’re on pie duty.”

Lorelai starts to snicker. “Stop,” Luke says, before she can get going. “You’re too old to find that word funny.”

“It’s a risky move, telling your wife she’s too old for something, Luke.” Rory says as she strips off a corn husk.

“Yeah, Luke,” Lorelai says. She wraps her arms around him from behind as he starts chopping potatoes at the counter. “Risky move.” She kisses him on the cheek.

“If you two start making out I’m bailing,” Rory announces.

“Me too,” Jess agrees.

“Fine.” Lorelai backs off. “I’ll go pick out some music.”

 

An hour later the house is crowded. Sookie, Jackson and Zack are in the living room with the kids, and Liz, TJ and Doula arrive at the door just behind Emily, who looks like she’d rather be anywhere else. April has brought her boyfriend, and Luke keeps finding excuses to insert himself into their conversation, while Lorelai keeps pulling him back out of it. Everyone has a plate piled high with food.

And Rory and Jess are hiding out the kitchen, with their plates and wine glasses. Stealing kisses when they’re sure no one is going to walk in on them and talking about whether or not they might want to go together to a book festival in Texas next weekend.

Lane comes into the kitchen just as Jess is removing two pies from the oven, and she watches Rory watch him do it. “Hey Rory,” she says. “Jess.”

“Lane.” Jess nods at her as he places the pies on top of the stove.

“You guys are missing the party.”

Jess shrugs.

“It was getting a little loud in there,” Rory says. The table in front of her is covered in dishes of food, and her plate and Jess’s are wedged into small spaces on opposite corners. She’s leaning back in her chair with her legs crossed, sipping from a glass of white wine. “You should join us, take a break from the crazy.”

Lane glances back into the living room before plopping down in an empty chair. “Works for me, Kwan can’t glare at me from here.”

“Why is he glaring?”

“Because he’s got a crush on Doula and my presence is apparently bad for his game.”

“If your kids are old enough for crushes then we’re officially ancient.”

“I hate to break it to you,” Lane says, swiping Rory’s wine glass, “but we’ve been ancient for a while. I’m pretty sure Steve’s got a boyfriend he won’t tell me about and Kwan has only moved on to Doula because Martha broke his heart last year.”

“No way,” Jess says, joining them at the table, “my little sister is no one’s second choice.”

Lane shrugs.

Rory leans forward to take a bite of mashed potatoes. Under the table her foot reaches out to wrap around his ankle.

“So how’s the band?” he asks Lane, like Rory’s toe isn’t currently sliding up his calf. “I saw you guys on Colbert last month.” He doesn’t mention that Rory had been there, too, her body twisted around his on the hotel bed in Mississippi. He’d flown down to meet her while she worked on a freelance reported story for Buzzfeed, and they’d eaten room service cheeseburgers and undressed each other in the dim light coming in off the parking lot.

“We’re good. We’re trying to plan another tour, but it’s tough with the kids in school. We try not to leave them with my mom too often.”

“If my memories of your mom are accurate I’m surprised you’d leave them with her at all.”

“She’s actually mellowed a lot,” Lane says, draining the last of Rory’s wine glass, “or maybe not mellowed, but she finally understands that my priorities are different from hers. We never would have made it work without her help.”

Lorelai walks in and Rory nearly knocks her plate off the table pulling her foot off of Jess’s lap and sitting up straight in her chair.

“What was that, kid?” Lorelai asks as she piles another helping of sweet potatoes onto her plate.

“Nothing, you just startled me.”

“Uh huh.” She glances between the three of them. “Zack’s wondering where you are,” she tells Lane. “Should I send him back?”

Lane shakes her head. “That’s okay, I’ll come back with you. You guys coming?”

Rory takes back her wine glass. “I’ll be in in a minute. Just gonna refill.”

Jess nods and swallows his last bite of green beans. “Yeah, me too.”

Alone in the kitchen he nods his head towards the back door, then reaches for her hand and tugs her out onto the porch.

 

The temperature has dropped with the sun, and they’re without their coats, but he pulls her tight against him and presses his mouth to hers. Immediately she can feel the blood pumping through every vein in her body, her skin flushing beneath her thin dress.

“I’ve been dying to do that for hours,” he says, coming up for air.

“Uh huh,” she says, pulling his lips to hers again.

The last time she kissed a boy on this porch she was 19, and she wasn’t pressed up against the vinyl siding, her legs spread around his knee, his hand sliding up under her skirt, dancing at the elastic of her underwear. The last time she kissed a boy on this porch it was chaste, there wasn’t even any tongue. And the last time she kissed a boy on this porch her grandmother didn’t walk in in the middle of it.

“Rory,” Emily says and they both jump about a foot in the air. “If you can pry yourself off this boy’s lips for a moment, I drove all the way out here to spend some time with you and you’ve spent the whole night hiding in the kitchen.”

A blush is climbing back up Rory’s neck, spreading across her ears and cheeks and all the way up her forehead.

“Sorry Grandma,” she says. Her fingers are still tangled in Jess’s, but her skirt has slipped back down to her knees. “Why don’t we go catch up now.” Emily is already turning and striding away. Rory shoots Jess an apologetic look as she follows Emily back into the house.

 

They’re settled into the couch by the time Jess enters the living room, water dripping down the back of his neck from washing his face in the kitchen sink. Rory is telling Emily about the reported piece for Buzzfeed, and another one she’s working on, some true crime thing for the _Atlantic_. Her hair has gone flat where he had her pressed up against the side of the house, and her lipstick is gone (he’d washed most of it off his own face), but otherwise it would be hard to tell that they’d been all over each other moments ago. He takes a steadying breath before walking over to his mother.

“There’s my boy,” Liz says as he approaches, “I wondered where you got to.”

“Just keeping an eye on the pies,” he tells her. “Didn’t want them to burn.”

Liz nods, doesn’t press him on it. “I was just telling Sookie about your new book,” she says, reaching up to futz with his hair. “You know the last one made the New York _Times_ bestseller list,” she tells Sookie, who nods politely, and even as he’s feeling embarrassed he can’t help but feel a little proud, too. He never thought he’d amount to anything worth bragging about.

“Just for a week,” he tells Sookie while he tries to put his hair back the way it was. “I’m pretty sure it was an error.”

“My Jess, so modest,” Liz says. “Don’t listen to him.”

They start talking about Doula’s fifth grade teacher, the same one Davey had a couple of years ago, and Jess allows his attention to drift. A quick glance around the room tells him no one is watching him, so he lets himself watch Rory for a moment, watch the way she hunches forward over her crossed arms to hear her grandmother better, the way her hair falls around her face, crimped a bit from being repeatedly tucked behind her ear. He traces the slope of her nose with his eyes, and the way she crosses her knees. It’s a moment before he realizes Emily Gilmore has her eyes on him. And she’s smiling like she’s got a secret.

He’s pretty sure this is a ticking bomb, the whole her-grandmother-walked-in-on-them thing, but he’s not sure what to do about it. The truth is, they need to make a decision, their secret relationship holding pattern is only making it all more complicated. But if they’re not on the same page...he’s just not ready for this to end.

He’s tried flushing Rory out of his system before, tried washing her away with other relationships, or with his work. He’s put a country between them a couple times now. He always comes back to her. And, he reminds himself, she always comes back to him.

This latest time it had started in New York, a chance encounter at a book party. Or rather, three chance encounters at book parties in as many weeks. Three conversations that started with an awkward introduction from a relative stranger. Three nights spent talking only to each other on the balcony at Housing Works. They’d sipped from plastic cups of cheap wine until they were the last people left three times, and then they’d fallen into a cab back to Brooklyn, and then up four flights of stairs to her apartment, and then into her bed three times. He’d woken up three mornings with her hair in his mouth and her pillow creases on his cheek.

After the third time they’d started acting with intention, planning to be at the same place at the same time–not an easy feat living in different cities. They started racking up Amtrak miles, and making late night phone calls, and still they didn’t plan more than a week out, didn’t dare make an official commitment.

And now it has been four months, and spending the day surrounded by people who know their whole history is proving stressful. This thing between them has been a secret, sure, but before today it hasn’t actually required much secret keeping. In New York or Philly or Mississippi no one knows them. They don’t have to worry about who sees them holding hands on the High Line, or kissing goodbye at 30th Street Station. No one is reporting back to the Stars Hollow gossip phone tree. It doesn’t matter much to him whether people know, but he’s pretty sure keeping this a secret is what it’ll take to keep Rory.

He pulls himself out of his head as Lorelai approaches him, a somewhat alarming grin on her face. He and Lorelai are fine now, really. They’ll never be best friends, but hey, he’s an adult and she’s married to his uncle and he’s pretty sure he’s in love with her daughter all over again, so it in his interest to get along with her and he does. But smiling? Smiling this wide? At him? Something is up.

“So Jess,” she says quietly, once she’s standing next to him. “How long have you and Rory been back together?”

Oops.

 

From the couch Rory watches Jess’s face fall. She’s not sure what her mother’s just said to him, but with an expression like that it’s probably not “would you like a slice of pumpkin pie?” And then Jess shoots her an expression that can only mean one thing and she realizes. Oh. They’ve been found out.

Of course she could have guessed this was coming. After all, not twenty minutes ago her grandmother had walked into the middle of a pretty heated make out session that she was now carefully not mentioning. But Emily hadn’t had a chance to say anything to Lorelai, had she? Rory had only trailed her into the living room by a few seconds. And she thought she’d been so careful today, not dropping his name into conversations or standing too close to him. Of course, they’d been alone in the kitchen for awhile, but they were friends, friends spent time together.

She can see his shoulders tightening as he talks to Lorelai, trying to convince her that nothing’s going on, she’s sure. He shakes his head and shrugs and his whole body rises and falls with it.

Keeping the last four months a secret from Lorelai has been difficult. She’s so used to sharing everything with her mother, and editing Jess out of her life has been more complicated than just not mentioning him. Things would be so much easier if Lorelai knew, that much is obvious, but she doesn’t want to risk losing him over it.

She’s not sure what Lorelai has said to him, but he’s turned and headed towards the kitchen, his elbows tight against his sides and his jaw tense. She takes a deep breath and tries to focus on what Emily is saying, something about an auction she’s planning to attend soon, but now Lorelai is coming for her too.

“Hey Mom, I’m just going to borrow Rory for a second,” she says, leaning over and wrapping her fingers around Rory’s wrist. “We’ll be right back.”

 

In the kitchen Jess is leaning against the counter beside the sink, his arms crossed over his chest and his head turned down to stare at his toes. She can't read the expression on his face, except to know that it's nothing good. Her ribs press in a little tighter around her heart. She leans against the counter opposite him, with the kitchen table still piled high with leftovers between them. Lorelai follows her in.

"Okay, what is going on with you two?" she demands.

Jess looks away, stares so intently at the fridge that he may well be trying to read the take-out menus that are tacked to it. Rory doesn't want to be the first to speak, but she knows him well enough to know it won't be him. She shrugs.

"Nothing's going on."

"Bull."

She cracks, just a little. "Did grandma tell you?"

"You told my mother before you told me?"

"I didn't tell grandma anything, she walked in on us."

"She _walked in_ on you? What were you doing?”

Rory can feel her cheeks flushing. "Making out on the porch."

"When?"

"After dinner."

Lorelai gapes at her, part astonishment, part admiration. She looks at Jess, then back at Rory. "How long have you been back together?"

"We're not together," Jess says, his first words since entering the kitchen. Then he stops talking, the Mariano trademark. He still hasn’t looked at either of them.

"You're not together? You're playing footsie under my table and making out on my porch and gazing longingly at each other from across my living room because you're completely uninvolved?"

"Mom." There's a warning in Rory's tone that she rarely uses with her mother.

“I’m just trying to understand. You’ve both been floating all day and the second I ask you about it you shut down completely.”

Jess scoffs a little at the word “floating,” but the truth is hard to deny. He lifts his eyes for just a moment, just enough to glance at Rory’s face. She looks more anxious than upset, he thinks. Was she really floating too?

“We’re just…” Rory starts to speak, but trails off.

“This is ridiculous. You’re not even good at keeping it a secret–you both called home from the same town in middle-of-nowhere, Mississippi, last month. Do you think Luke and I don’t talk to each other? Not to mention that Gypsy saw you kissing on the bridge in broad daylight this morning. For two people trying so hard to deny there’s anything going on, you’ve been acting an awful lot like you want to get caught.”

And, for the first time since entering the kitchen, Rory and Jess meet each other’s eyes. Rory bites her lip.

“We live in different cities,” Jess says.

Rory shrugs. “I’ve been thinking about leaving New York, actually.” She stands up straight and takes a step away from the counter. “I mean, the rent is crazy. And I’m a freelancer, I can work from anywhere.”

He uncrosses his arms. “You’d want to live in Philadelphia?”

“I never really thought about it,” she says. “Not until recently.” She looks over at her mother and then back at him. “It’s got a few things to recommend it.”

He swallows and she watches the way his adam’s apple bobs in his throat.

“I wouldn’t move for just some casual thing, though.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to.”

They’re still standing on opposite sides of the kitchen table,

“Oh, honestly,” Lorelai says. Her hands are on her hips and she’s got an expression of amusement and extreme annoyance on her face. “Rory, do you want to be with Jess.”

Rory nods. “Yes.”

“Jess, do you want to be with Rory?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay then. Problem solved.” She turns back towards the living room. “Now go be mushy outside of my line of sight.”

Alone again, they stare at each other for a moment. Then Jess smiles. “So you were floating, huh?”

“Apparently I wasn’t the only one.”

“Yeah well, you know what they say about me. ‘That Jess, he’s such a happy-go-lucky guy.’”

“I’ve definitely heard that sentiment expressed. Many times.”

She comes around the side of the table, reaches out and grabs onto his sleeve. “I feel like an idiot.”

“Why?”

“Because...I don’t know. I was scared if I told you what I really wanted that you’d disappear or something.”

“So was I.”

She nods, slides her arms around his waist. “I guess we’re both idiots then.”

He reaches up, tucks her hair behind her ears. Cradles her face between his hands. “I’m pretty much in love with you, Rory Gilmore,” he says. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Then his lips are sliding soft across hers. The sounds of chatter from the living room fade out, the smell of potatoes and garlic and pumpkin pie spices. “Wait.” She pulls away from him, just far enough to speak. The world comes back in focus. “I’m in love with you, too, Jess,” she says. He smiles, warm and wide, and she leans into it, presses her own smile up against his. The world drops away again and they let it.


End file.
